‘Nairac was in Derry at
time of Green murder’

Kevin Mullan

Published:21:00Friday 02 February 2018

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An investigator at the commission for the recovery of the ‘disappeared’ has said Captain Robert Nairac was on an operation in Derry when IRA Volunteer John Green was murdered in Co. Monaghan in 1975 and couldn’t have been involved in the killing.

Geoff Knupfer, a forensic expert at the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), said the Grenadier Guard coudn’t have colluded with loyalists to murder the 27-year-old on Mullyhash Mountain on January 10, 1975.

The murder of Mr. Green is among several atrocities with which the former British Army intelligence officer has been linked.

However, during the most recent meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, Mr. Knupfer said Nairac was working undercover in the North West at the time.

“He was actively deployed on an operation in Derry, many miles away from where this incident occurred in Co. Monaghan,” said Mr. Knupfer.

He said this had been verified by witnesses tracked down by the ICLVR.

“We in the commission are satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that these witness accounts are absolutely accurate and the individuals providing them are telling the truth,” he said.

Nairac, who was abducted from a pub in Drumintee in South Armagh on May 15, 1977, is, alongside Joseph Lynskey and Columba McVeigh, among three out of 16 ‘disappeared’ victims who have yet to be recovered by the ICLVR. Mr. Knupfer told the committee that Nairac was never in the S.A.S. and that his role in the North was that of a liaison and intelligence officer between the R.U.C. and the British Army.

Former Labour MP Ken Livingstone, in his maiden speech in the House of commons in 1987 claimed Nairac “had assassinated John Francis Green, an active member of the IRA” and had taken “photographs as proof of that operation”.